Today and tomorrow sees the public launch of the Alliance for Socially Engaged Arts at the Gulbenkian centre in Lisbon. This new partnership of 11 major European foundations marks a further step in the recognition of participatory art and co-creation—what in A Restless Art, I described as its normalisation. The foundations are already supporters of organisations in this field, some very substantially and for many years.
The Alliance’s first initiative is a Fellowship Programme to support, in their words, ‘visionary leaders of arts organisations driven by community engagement and social change across Europe.’ Each Fellow will receive €30,000 for their organisation and €30,000 to support their learning and development in a specially designed leadership programme. Applications open today and all the details can found on the Alliance’s website:
Please help circulate the information to those you think might most benefit and have most to contribute to the programme.
The Alliance, which has been developed over several years, opens many possibilities for positive change—not only new funding, but knowledge exchange, networking, new ways of working, and even the policy changes that make good work sustainable. At a time when there is much cause for anxiety this is a truly hopeful initiative.
And you can still follow the presentations at the Alliance’s meeting in Lisbon on the Gulbenkian Foundation website.
François Matarasso 